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AWEA Blog - Wind energy, PTC advance in elections

Wind energy fared well in Tuesday’s elections, with voters returning wind champions in both parties to Congress, and allowing the current administration’s support for wind energy to continue uninterrupted.

“We’re pleased
to see the popular support we’ve always seen in polling validated
by the election of so many champions of wind energy who’ve stepped
out on our behalf, Republicans and Democrats,” said AWEA CEO Denise
Bode. “We heard a lot about wind energy in this election, and it
proved to be a winning issue because it is so popular with the
American people. As just one measure, an overwhelming majority of the
members supported by our political action committee, WindPAC, won
their races.”

Among the dozens of
Republican wind champions reelected to Congress yesterday, for
example, were outspoken House supporters Reps. Dave Reichert (R-WA),
Steve King (R-IA) and Tom Latham (R-IA), and Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV).

Independent Angus
King, a wind project developer since leaving the governorship in
Maine, won his race for the open Senate seat there.

Overall, AWEA sees
continued bipartisan support In Congress for extending the federal
wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) to incentivize $15 billion a
year in private investment in U.S. wind farms, with support steady in
the Senate and a net increase in announced supporters in the U.S.
House.

Swing states with
numerous wind farms as well as wind factories were carried in the
election by President Obama, whose campaign took the position that
Congress should extend the PTC.

They included Iowa
and Colorado, where layoffs have struck wind energy factories because
of uncertainty over when Congress will address the tax credit, and
Michigan and Ohio, states that are important to the wind energy
supply chain and have untapped wind resources under development.

One measure of
support for wind this election: Of the 12 new Senators, seven
received WindPAC backing this election cycle. Out of all the Senate
candidates for this election cycle who were supported by WindPAC, 89
percent won their races.

In the House, there
may be as many as 85 new House members and districts, once all races
are decided. Of all the House candidates supported by WindPAC, 88
percent won as well.

Current House
Members include 119 co-sponsors of H.R. 3307, introduced by Rep. Dave
Reichert (R-WA-8) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-3), which would
extend the PTC through 2016. Of those, 87 won reelection, including
14 Republicans, and three more won Senate seats, with three races
undecided on Wednesday.

In its election
analysis yesterday, The Hill listed “wind energy tax credits” as
one of the top three “energy winners” from the election, noting
that the results will free up more Republicans in Congress to back an
extension. Also, the Des Moines Register’s “A Better Iowa”
feature quoted two experts who named “continuing tax credits for
Iowa’s wind energy industry” as one of the top five outcomes of
the election for Iowa.

For more
information, including bipartisan endorsements of the PTC’s
extension, please see www.SaveUSAWindJobs.com.

The PTC is an
incentive that reduces taxes on the operators of wind farms and
leaves more of the money they earn from electricity sales in private
hands, helping to attract private investment not only in wind
projects, but in component manufacturers, suppliers, trucking
companies and more. The PTC provides an income tax credit of 2.2
cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of electricity
production from utility-scale wind turbines. It is set to expire on
Dec. 31 unless Congress extends it first. A recent study by Navigant
Consulting found that extending the Production Tax Credit will allow
the industry to grow to 100,000 jobs in just four years, while an
expiration would kill 37,000 jobs within a year.

A House bill seeking
to extend the PTC has 110 cosponsors, including 25 Republicans, while
a similar Senate bill is cosponsored by seven Senators, including
three Republicans. PTC extension efforts have received the
endorsement of a broad coalition of more than 370 members, including
the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Farm Bureau
Federation, and the Western Governors’ Association. A PTC extension
also has the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National
Governors Association, and the bipartisan Governors’ Wind Energy
Coalition, which includes 23 Republican and Democratic Governors from
across the U.S. A PTC extension has been endorsed by a number of
newspapers across the country, including the Des Moines Register, the
Denver Post, the Daily Oklahoman, the Toledo Blade, the Houston
Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News, the Philadelphia Inquirer,
the Chicago Sun-Times, and The New York Times.